Mark Zuckerberg Generosity and the Vanity of Riches

The CEO, of facebook, Mark Zuckerberg ,recently became a father and after sharing the news, made another announcement: he was giving away his wealth. He made a pledge to invest 99% of his facebook shares into charity. Zuckerberg, by the way, is worth $45bn, by the time his pledge is taken from his immense fortune, he would be left with a ‘’paltry’’ $450m.
He is definitely not going to be poor and he can always build up his vast wealth again but that does not take away from his generosity.
Anti-capitalists will definitely find something to carp about; the injustice in a system that allows one person to build so much wealth while million others in his country cannot even get higher minimum wages. Sometimes as needful as health insurance is subjected to endless political wrangling in the United States.
Yet, Zuckerberg deserves commendation. He did not have to concern himself with the problems in the world when he did not cause them. One can dismiss his large-heartedness and say, after all, he has more than enough but so what? Poorer people perhaps find it easier to give than those who are stupendously rich. Money has a spirit that possesses those who have it such that they can turn themselves inside out stockpiling it for the sheer joy of watching it grow. It takes an inordinate amount of large-heartedness to exorcise oneself from the grip of money and give it up to a sorely hurting world.
This is not the first time Zuckerberg would toe this path. A while ago, he announced an initiative that will give billions of people in the world free access to the internet as a step towards empowering them to improve their own lives. His latest act of generosity is however touching because he indicated that he was doing it to make a better place for his newborn daughter. There is wisdom in that sentiment. While millions of us around the world are busy hustling, praying and lavishly acquiring things to make our individual world more conducive, Zuckerberg runs with a broader vision; one based on the understanding that no matter how comfortable we make our private nest, we will still have to exist within the larger world along with its many imperfections. We have the choice to either continue to rip our souls and despoil the world in order to feather our private corner of existence. Or, we can throw our resources into recreating a better world where we can spend less energy and effort to attain a similar pleasure, this time one shared by all. Zuckerberg has chosen the latter and this gesture in my opinion, is worth emulating.